The Unrivalled Christ

You've got a continued major hunger crisis in Yemen because of the civil war there. We've got environmental disasters happening regularly that we hear about. People are stressed and anxious and worried. And the question is, who can deal with such a wide-scale issue? All of us, we know that there is something wrong.

We know it whether you have faith or not. And no one, no government, no president, no prime minister, no country, no man, no woman, no movement is large enough to deal with the scale of the problem that we see in our world. But I want to suggest that that question of who can do something about this finds an answer in our passage today. We're looking at Colossians 1:15-23, and it shows us that there is an answer to our desire for security and restoration. Now the reason we're looking at this passage is because we're in a new eight-week series. We're in the second week of this eight-week series called The All Sufficient Christ: Why Jesus is All You Need.

We're taking eight weeks to go through passage by passage this letter of Colossians, and this letter presents us with one of the most grand and lofty visions of Jesus that we have in the New Testament. And really it has this reputation because of the passage that we're looking at this morning. The passage that we're looking at this morning are the most famous words in the letter, and they give us this lofty and exalted and unrivalled picture of who the Lord Jesus Christ is. So we're just going to jump in and enjoy and unfold it together, and we're going to break down this passage under four headings. And the first heading is this: Christ unrivalled over the old creation.

Christ unrivalled over the old creation. So our passage begins by saying that He, that's Jesus, is the image of the invisible God. Now if you're familiar with your Bible, that word image should spark some things in your mind. It should take you back to Genesis one where it says that in the image of God, He created them. Male and female, He created — sorry, in the image of God, He created him.

Male and female, He created them. Human beings, we are made in God's image. We are meant to be kind of like statues that resemble God throughout the world, not necessarily in physical appearance, but in the way that we conduct ourselves, in our character, by reigning over the earth for His glory. We're meant to be God's image bearers, but we know that that image was shattered and broken in Genesis three when Adam and Eve decided to rebel against their image and choose instead for themselves between good and evil rather than asking, following what God said was good and was evil. So that image was shattered, but Jesus, having a truly human nature, He is the image of the invisible God.

He is the perfect image of God. He came to fulfil what we as human beings were meant to fulfil. He is born bearing God's image perfectly throughout His life. He shows us what God is like. We read in John's gospel, John 1:18, no one has ever seen God.

God, the only Son, who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known. If you want to know what God is like, look no further than Jesus. He is the perfect resemblance and image of God. He shows us what God is like in His courage, in His love, in His compassion, in His wisdom. Jesus is the image of God, and that's why some scholars actually say that Jesus is being pictured here as a second Adam.

So the first Adam was like a head of the human race who failed, but Jesus is a second Adam who has come to relaunch the human project, so to speak, and to fulfil what the first Adam failed to do and create a new human line under him. Jesus is the image of the invisible God. That's the first thing that Paul says, but he's just going to build and build and build and build here. The second thing that Paul says is that Jesus is the firstborn of all creation. Now that might be a bit confusing for a moment because if you believe Jesus is God, which we do as a church, then this sounds like He's the first one that was born, like He's the first creature, literally the first one in the birth order.

And the Greek word, the original Greek word that Paul used here, it can mean birth order, but the second meaning it has is associated with the status of a firstborn. See, in the ancient world, the firstborn had a very high status. They were the one who would inherit the estate and so on, and that's what it's referring to here, that Jesus has the highest status in all of creation. He is first in rank. Now if you don't believe me, the Bible uses it this way in other passages.

So if you go back to Psalm 89, the psalm talks about David and it says this about David. God says, and I will make him, that's David, the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. Now if you know anything about David, David is the youngest of all of the sons in that family. He's not the first in literal birth order. God is not promising here to put all the sons back into the womb and take David out first.

God is promising here to give David the rank of the firstborn, and that's what's being said about Jesus in Colossians 1:15. He has the rank of the firstborn in all of creation. He is the highest. Now, if you're still not sure about this, our next verse clarifies it even further. Verse 16 says, for by Him all things were created through Him and for Him.

Okay. So this is all things, and all things were created through Jesus. Jesus is not part of the all things that were created. He is uncreated. He is God.

So that clarifies things if you're worried about the firstborn language. But secondly, this is saying something incredible. By Jesus, through Jesus, and for Jesus, all things were created. When you came here this morning, when you saw the sun out, the blue skies, all of that was created through Jesus. When you look at the trees, when you look at the grass around us, when you look at the waves of the ocean, all things were created through Jesus, and for Jesus, for His glory.

About 7,000 light years away are some things that we call the pillars of creation. They're around five light years in length. That's a picture from the Hubble telescope that depicts these vast columns of gas, each one unimaginably large, where new stars are actually being formed. That's why astronomers call them the pillars of creation. New stars are being formed in these things all the time.

And when I say five light years in length, that would mean if you were travelling at the speed of light, it would take you five years to traverse this thing. Think about the speed of light. If we turn the lights off and then on again in the building, and you try to notice how fast the room illuminates, it looks instantaneous. If you were travelling at that speed, it would take you five years to cover the distance of the pillars of creation, and they are 7,000 light years away from earth. And these things were created through Jesus and for Jesus.

These things declare the glory and the worth of Christ. Some people ask, why such a massive universe with so many galaxies and stars and planets that, to this stage, we don't find anyone else inhabiting these planets. It seems like a waste. It seems like an excess. And the answer is, it was created for Jesus, to communicate the glory and the excellency and the power of Christ.

You could not create enough to communicate the worth of Christ. It is not excess. It is still insufficient to communicate how wonderful and glorious Jesus is. All things are created by Jesus, through Jesus, and for Jesus. And in this sense, Paul is actually picturing Jesus as wisdom in the passage.

You see, in the Old Testament and some other Jewish writings, there's this wisdom tradition that talked about wisdom as this kind of personified thing, as if wisdom is something that existed that helped God create everything. So for example, in Proverbs eight, we see this personification of wisdom, and this is what wisdom says. Wisdom says, when God established the heavens, I was there. Wisdom was there. When He drew a circle on the face of the deep, when He made firm the skies above, when He established the fountains of the deep, when He assigned the sea its limits so that the waters might not transgress His command, when He marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside Him.

Like a master workman, I was daily His delight, rejoicing before Him always, rejoicing in His inhabited world and delighting in the children of man. The language that Paul uses for Jesus in Colossians is actually pointing us to the fact that Jesus is wisdom incarnate. He is the one by whom and through whom God created all things. Jesus Himself said in Matthew 11 about Himself, He said, wisdom is justified by her deeds. He claimed to be wisdom incarnate.

We cannot conceive of the incredible intelligence and wisdom in Christ that enabled Him to create such an incredible universe and a solar system that is so finely tuned that if it were just out of balance by a small variable, we could not live here on this earth. Jesus is the one by whom and through whom and for whom all these things were created. What words can suffice for the glory of Jesus? That's why some scholars call this a hymn, verses 15 to 20.

This hymn, this song, is so exalted because Paul is stretching for words to try and get across to us how glorious Jesus is. Words cannot suffice, but we still make attempts. And one song by an artist called Propaganda on his album Excellent makes an attempt, and the song is called Lofty. It features a group called Beautiful Eulogy. They're a group of poets and rappers.

This is how they try to describe the excellence and the wisdom and the beauty of God. It says, God spoke and the formless earth was sculpted. His poetry producing populations, making constellations. Remember, all this was happening through Jesus. With His conversations, gazing at His own creation, proclaiming it was good and there we stood, fashioned from the dust.

With authority, He orchestrated organisms in every single cell and every ecosystem, every creature that dwells, the planets, the plants, the whole expanse, the sky above your head, and the ground where you stand, the clouds and the rain, the soil that soaks it up and feeds tiny seeds so they sprout and vegetation proceeds, infinite wisdom intrinsic within Him, self-sufficient, intricate systems begin and end with His decisions, lofty, out of reach, how He procreated with speech, so it's appropriate for us to be completely in awe. These words describe the wisdom and the creative intelligence of Jesus Christ. Christ is unrivalled in all of creation. But I've only described the visible creation so far. I haven't described the invisible creation.

When we think about angels and demons, they're not eternal beings. They are creatures that were created. And the unseen realm of God's handiwork was also created through Jesus as well. This is what Paul gets at in verse 16. It says, for by Jesus all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, and now he elaborates on invisible.

What are these invisible things? Whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. See, Paul is not talking about political or earthly thrones and dominions here. He's talking about spiritual ones.

If you're familiar with the armour of God in Ephesians six, Paul says, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, earthly things, but we wrestle with the authorities, with the rulers, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Paul uses this kind of authority, throne, ruler language to describe the heavenly realm, the unseen spiritual realm. Now we're not given an org chart for it in the Bible, so we don't exactly know how it all scales together, but what Paul is saying here is that all things were created through Jesus, including the invisible things, whether archangels or messengers, cherubim or seraphim, unseen rulers or authorities, Satan and his demons, all of these things were created through and for Jesus. And the reason this was relevant for the Colossian church was because the false teachers that were meddling with them were obsessed with spiritual rulers, with angels. So in Colossians 2:18, it says that they insisted on the worship of angels. That was part of the false teaching that was bothering this church.

And they were teaching these false teachers were saying that because parts of our world are governed by different spiritual authorities and angels, we need to be devoted to them as well. We need to worship them and appease them so that we can be in harmony with them in this place that we live. Now there's some biblical backing to suggest that spiritual rulers do govern over different areas. If you think of the book of Daniel, there was one called the Prince of Persia who seemed to govern that area, but the fact that these false teachers are saying we need to worship these things as well is utterly foolish. Paul shuts this thinking down by insisting that there is no competitor to Christ.

Any kind of angel, whether fallen or not, is under Jesus' jurisdiction. They were created through Jesus. They were created for Jesus. There is nowhere in the world you could fall outside of His care. Now as Christians, we believe in a spiritual realm.

We're spiritual people. We know that there is a heaven. We know that there are angels and demons. There is Satan. There's God.

But Satan and his demons, they're not competitors to God. They're not rivals to God. They're creatures who are fallen and remain under God's sovereign jurisdiction and authority. And Paul's getting that across to us here. He's saying everything, whether it's the invisible things, was created through Jesus and for Jesus.

I don't know about you, but maybe sometimes you get fearful about evil or about the domain of darkness. Maybe you hear about a meeting of witches, or maybe it's Halloween coming up and you're worried that people are obsessing with darker things a little bit. I know for me, sometimes after I've preached a sermon or sometimes while I'm preparing a sermon and I'm by myself, every now and then I get this feeling of dread in the room, this feeling of fear. And for me, I know, I believe that that's just Satan trying to oppose me. And what I need to do is just remind myself of what God's word says.

Matthew 28, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus. I belong to King Jesus. Nothing is outside of His rule. And you just declare that, and I find that that feeling leaves as I declare the word of God. That's what the sword of the Spirit is in Ephesians six.

It's the word of God. It's the word of the gospel. We declare to the darkness that Jesus has already defeated you on the cross, that Jesus is the ruler of heaven and earth, and that He will come and make all things new and banish the darkness forever. So if you're a person that sometimes feels fearful of dark spiritual things, they can't actually do anything to you. Satan's like this fangless serpent now.

He can come and scare you a little bit or lie, but he's just speaking lies, empty words. You proclaim the word of God and stand there under the authority of the all-sovereign Christ. Jesus is the universal Lord of all things. And Paul goes even further than just saying that everything was created through Jesus. He also shows us that Jesus is the ongoing sustainer of reality itself.

And so he says in verse 17 that Jesus is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Imagine Jesus is holding the universe, all that we do know that's 7,000 light years away and all that we don't even know about yet. He's holding it all together. And the reason that we can breathe this morning, the reason that we have breath in our lungs and our heart is still beating, is because Jesus has chosen not to let it go. Otherwise, the fabric of reality would be torn and we would cease to exist.

Jesus is the ongoing sustainer who holds all things together. Paul was making some lofty claims about Jesus. One Bible scholar, Doctor Doug Moo, says, what holds the universe together is not an idea or a virtue, but a person, the resurrected Christ. Without Him, electrons would not continue to circle nuclei, gravity would cease to work, the planets would not stay in their orbits. Christ is unrivalled over the old creation.

But why do I say old creation? Why don't I just say creation? Well, Jesus in His ministry, His life and His death and His resurrection, part of what He was doing was launching the new creation, the new age, and we're going to look at this next, how Jesus is unrivalled, not just in the old age with the old earth, but in the new age that is breaking in and is coming in this new creation. So let's take a look at that next. We've looked at Christ unrivalled over the old creation, and now we're going to look at how Christ is unrivalled over the new creation.

So in verse 18 it says, and Jesus is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent. To be preeminent is to be, again, the highest ranking, the one who is without rival. He is preeminent and supreme. And it starts by saying He is the head of the body, the church.

We are Jesus' body on earth. We're His new creation people. We're meant to be ambassadors of the world that is coming, the new creation that is coming, pointing people to it, pointing people to its king, to Jesus, and letting the new creation begin to evidence itself among us in the way that we love each other, in the way that we serve, in the way that we give ourselves to the gospel. We are Jesus' body on earth, and it says that He is the beginning. It's not talking about the Genesis one beginning.

We've already talked about the old creation. It's saying that Jesus is the beginning of the new creation. Like I said, Jesus' resurrection was not just His victory over death, it was also the launching of the new creation. It's when the new age that God had promised dawned, and He poured out His Spirit at Pentecost. And we are already, as it says in 2 Corinthians 5, if anyone is in Christ, behold, they are a new creation. The new creation has begun and awaits its fullness one day.

This is the tension that we encounter everywhere in the New Testament. This already but not yet tension. God's promises are breaking in, but we wait for their fullness still. We are new creations, but we still wrestle with sin in the flesh. But this is what we're meant to be as God's people, as God's church.

We're meant to be an outpost of the new creation, a people who are beginning to be remade into the image of the invisible God. And it says again that Jesus is the firstborn from the dead. This just again means that He is the first fruits of this new creation. He is the first one to be resurrected that is part of this new creation age, that in everything He might be preeminent. Jesus is a preview of what one day we will be.

His resurrection body, His moral beauty, His joy, and His victory will one day be ours in the new creation, where Christ will remain unmatched and unrivalled. If you're someone who is worried about the state of our world and you want to see it be restored and cleaned up and healed, then Jesus is the leader that you should look to in remaking the world. No government or country or movement can restore the world from its brokenness, only Jesus can. This is what He promises, and we are to be heralds of His coming new creation. We're to embody the new thing that He is doing through the church.

If you want to see the healing of the world, look no further than Jesus. It has already begun in Him, and it will all be wrapped up in Him. Christ is unrivalled over the new creation. But the apostle Paul still isn't done yet. As if this isn't a big enough picture of Jesus yet, he wants to keep going.

So after telling us that Jesus is unrivalled in the old and new creation, he tells us that Christ is unrivalled in restoration. Christ unrivalled in restoration. So in verse 19, it says, for in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Jesus is not merely a Jewish carpenter. Historians everywhere acknowledge He existed.

Some will disbelieve that He was God. Some do believe. But He's not merely a historical person, a Jewish carpenter. Jesus is the one in whom God's fullness was pleased to dwell. Jesus is not semi-divine or quasi-divine.

Jesus was not born human and then adopted into God's fullness later or filled at His baptism. Jesus is fully divine. He is the one in whom all God's fullness is pleased to dwell. This is temple language that Paul is using here. In the Old Testament, if you wanted to go and find the hotspot of God's presence, you would go to the tabernacle or the temple, but Jesus is the new temple, the one whom we go to to access God, to worship, and to praise.

All the fullness of God dwells in Him, and God through Him wishes to reconcile the world to Himself. This is what we see in verse 20, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross. Now, I wonder what you think about when you think about Jesus' blood shed on the cross. If I asked you, what did that accomplish, I'm guessing you might say something like the salvation of sinners, and that's correct. But what is Paul saying here in verse 20?

He's saying something far more expansive. He just said that through the blood of the cross, Jesus is reconciling to Himself all things whether on earth or in heaven. The cross is not just about personal reconciliation, the cross is about cosmic restoration. It's incredible that Jesus is bringing all things back into subjection under Himself. Now, we've got to ask what this means exactly because that kind of sounds like everything in heaven and on earth, even Satan and his demons, are going to be reconciled to God, and we're all going to live at peace together one day.

This is actually one of the universalists' famous favourite verses, and a universalist is someone who says that everyone will be saved in the end. That God's love is so perfect and eternal that it will overcome every barrier of resistance, and even after people die, it will continue to work and work and work until everyone, even Satan, cannot resist and repents and turns back and is saved. Now, is that what the Bible teaches? No, it doesn't, and that's not what this verse is teaching either, because Paul elaborates on what this reconciliation work means in the next chapter.

In 2:15, Paul says, He disarmed the rulers and authorities. So if we're going to say in 1:20 that when He's reconciling all the heavenly things to Himself, the rulers and authorities, that that means cosmic forgiveness, then 2:15 doesn't make any sense, because this is what Jesus did on the cross. Through His blood on the cross, He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in Christ. Doug Moo again, that scholar, he says, the spiritual beings to which Paul refers explicitly in verse 20 are not saved by Christ, but vanquished by Him. See, the idea that's coming together here is, when it says that Christ reconciles all things together to Himself, it's that He's reordering the entire cosmos. He's bringing everything back to its proper place again and subjecting all things to Himself, so that those demons who have rebelled against God, they will be brought back into subjection to God.

This is just the teaching of the New Testament. So we see in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says, then comes the end when Jesus delivers the kingdom to God, the Father, after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. That's what Paul's talking about here.

It's cosmic reconciliation. It's a cosmic restoration of order, but it doesn't mean that every creature will be redeemed and forgiven. We are called, as people in this age, to repent and believe and put our trust in Jesus, the only way to be made right with God. Now the cosmic reconciliation that Paul talks about includes our personal reconciliation. That's why Paul says in verse 21, and you who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, He has now reconciled in His body of flesh by His death.

This is what we were without God's grace. We were alienated from God. We were estranged from God. We were hostile in our minds towards God. Now that might not mean that you hated God before Jesus directly.

Maybe it did. But it can also just mean that you're hostile towards God in the sense that you don't want to come under His rule and reign. You would trust your own thinking and your own feelings more. You'd rather lead yourself your own way, and Christians still wrestle with this. All of us were completely sold out to that way of living before God graciously came to rescue us.

See, Jesus didn't reconcile us to God by coming to us and telling us, you better make things right. You've got to go and make it up to God now. We couldn't repay God the debt that we owe Him. Instead, Jesus reconciled us to God by giving His own body over to the curse of death we were under. He became accursed and forsaken at the cross, so that in Him, blessing and reconciliation with God become ours.

This is the gospel. It's a cosmic and personal gospel. Jesus' death on the cross and His resurrection from the grave is the power to heal you and me, and it's the power to heal our world and to set everything aright. If you want somebody to clean up the mess we see in our world, look no further than Jesus. One day He will return, and all those who trust in Him will be welcomed into His new creation.

No one can rival Him in this. His restoration project is so expansive that no one, nothing is outside of it. No one can jeopardise it. It will not just encompass you and me, it will encompass the entire cosmos. This is what we learn in verses 19 to 22.

Christ is unrivalled in restoration. And Christ doesn't just restore us to give us a clean slate. Christ intends to save us fully and present us one day before God as holy and blameless. This is why He has restored us, for that end-time goal where we'll be presented to God as almost like this redeemed and purified gift to God, which is pretty incredible to think about. We'll look at this next under the final heading, Christ unrivalled in preservation.

So we've covered a lot. We've looked at how Christ is unrivalled over the old creation, over the new creation, in restoration, this cosmic reordering, and now in preservation. Jesus didn't die just to give us an initial salvation, a clean slate to work with. Jesus' salvation includes His promise to preserve us all the way to the new creation. Jesus didn't die to potentially save people.

He died to accomplish and say it is finished about the salvation of His people. Paul states this purpose in the second part of verse 22. It says that Jesus reconciled us in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him. That's talking about at the end of time when Jesus returns and God judges all things. Jesus will present us as holy and blameless before His Father. No one can snatch us from the hands of the unrivalled, matchless, preeminent Christ.

He died to save us and present us before God one day as righteous. That does not mean that we just let go and let God. Right? Jesus is going to preserve me, so whatever, I'll just let it happen. Actually, we work at our salvation knowing that God is working in us.

It's not this either-or situation where it's either me working or it's God working. I work knowing that God is at work in me. That's what Philippians two teaches. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to work for His good pleasure. Martin Luther once helpfully said something like, even though we are saved by faith alone, we're not saved by a faith that remains alone.

Yes. We're saved through faith alone by grace alone. We don't contribute to our salvation, but it's a living faith. It's a faith that puts down roots in the gospel of Jesus that actually believes, that actually begins to love God and want to follow Him and bear fruit for His glory. It comes along with evidence.

It's not a faith that remains alone. And that's why Paul can say in the same breath that Christ will present us as holy and blameless, and then at the same time warn us to say, don't go astray. So he says in verse 23, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard. So Paul is saying, Christ will present you, but continue in the faith. Don't shift.

Remain stable and steadfast in Christ. Now remember, the Colossians needed to hear this because they were being meddled with by these false teachers who were tempting them to stray a little from Jesus. Not to deny Him, but they were saying, strengthen your faith by adding some things to Him. And Paul knows that that message undermines the gospel. So his message to the Colossians here is don't listen to the false teachers.

Christ is unrivalled. Continue in Him. Don't shift. Don't add. Continue in Christ.

There is no one greater in all of creation, whether old or new. There is no one who can give us harmony with God apart from Him. He is unrivalled in restoration. There is no one who can secure our future hope more than He can. He died to save us, and one day He will present His people to the Father as a kind of gift, an inheritance for God, as it says in Ephesians one.

A redeemed humanity who will actually fulfil God's plan for them to bear His image in all of creation and reign over it for His glory. Paul wants to remind us that the unrivalled Christ is all we need for restoration and preservation. And when you think about it, when you think about who Paul presents to us here, that Jesus is the firstborn, He's the highest rank, He's the one through whom all things were created, for whom all things were created. He's the one who's holding everything together. He's the one in whom all the fullness of God dwells.

He's the one who we go to to access God's presence. He's the one who is reordering the entire universe. When you think about it, it just sounds stupid to add anything on to Him, saying, oh, well, He's good, but you need a bit more. No, He is all sufficient. He is without rival, without equal.

He is all that we need to be saved and to grow and mature in our faith, and that's why Paul says, be stable and steadfast in your faith. That means to be grounded on a strong foundation and firmly fixed. Think about a skyscraper. When the foundation of a skyscraper is constructed, they drill deep into the earth, putting these massive concrete piles down, sometimes tens of metres, anchoring the building into solid ground before they pour a thick slab of reinforced concrete over it. If the foundation isn't deep and secure, the whole structure is at risk of collapsing.

So they build it grounded, fixed and stable so it doesn't move, and that's what Paul wants us to hear. That's what God wants us to hear through His word this morning. Continue in Christ. Put your piles deep down. Put your roots deep down into the soil.

Be strong in Him. Don't shift from Jesus. Don't listen to anyone that says Jesus is great, but you need more. There are other things that are good, but they are not what we need. We need Jesus.

Other things are good and helpful, like podcasts and books and things like that, but if someone says these are what you need to have, that's a false teaching. Jesus is all sufficient. Don't move on from Him. You don't upgrade from Him. You just put your roots down deeper into the soil of that gospel.

That's what Paul wants us to hear. Nothing else. No president or prime minister, no government or nation, no movement, man or woman are big enough to clean up the mess in our world. The scale of the problem demands a solution beyond us. We need worldwide restoration.

We need cosmic reconciliation. We need Jesus. No one can compete with His ability to save. He is unrivalled, matchless, preeminent, peerless, supreme, foremost, unsurpassed, not just better than everything else in creation, but in a category and a class of His own. The creator, not a supreme creature, but the one in whom all the fullness of God dwells.

In light of who Christ is, why would we look anywhere else? Why would you trust in anyone else? Why would you put your hope in anyone else? Jesus is clearly so much greater and larger than everything else we could compare Him with in this world. Christ is unrivalled.

Continue in Him. Let me finish by sharing some words of a song that we're going to respond with in a moment. It's called In Christ Alone. It's probably familiar to you, and it reminds us of why we doggedly remain focused on Christ alone. It says, in Christ alone, my hope is found.

He is my light, my strength, my song. This cornerstone, this solid ground, firm through the fiercest drought and storm. What heights of love, what depths of peace, when fears are stilled, when striving cease, my comforter, my all in all, here in the love of Christ, I stand. Stand, Open House Church. Stand and do not stray from Him. There is no one greater.

There is no one stronger. There is no one kinder. There is no one higher. There is no one else who can compete with the unrivalled Christ. Continue in Him.

Let me pray for us. Father, words are insufficient to communicate the glorious weight of Christ Jesus. We thank you that your Spirit is able to do far more than we ask or imagine. And so I ask that your Holy Spirit would give each one of us here in this room and online an ability to perceive the weight and the glory and the majesty of Christ. Would you open up our hearts to His beauty?

Would you captivate our senses with His presence? We ask for more of Him, so that we might not be distracted by other false gospels, other false solutions. He is the one and only thing we need. So we praise you, Jesus, and we pray this in your name. Amen.